Grenade pouches are desirable for enabling law enforcement and military personnel to carry grenades on their person. Grenade pouches are frequently designed to attach to tactical vests so the grenade pouches can be worn. Grenade pouches are designed with flaps that secure the grenades within the grenade pouches while still enabling quick access to the grenades contained therein.
Although grenade pouches provide obvious advantages to the wearer, conventional approaches have also suffered from significant disadvantages. Conventional grenade pouches used with 40 mm grenades, which is a military grenade caliber for grenade launchers, are capable of preventing the grenade from falling out of the grenade pouch through use of a removable strap over the base of the grenade. However, the securing strap of a conventional grenade pouch does not meaningfully protect the percussion primer at the base of the grenade from strong impacts, which could cause catastrophic unintentional discharge of the grenade if an object struck the primer with sufficient force.
In addition, existing grenade pouches suffer from other disadvantages. The speed of deployment may be limited when a simple hook and loop fastener strap is used because of the possibility of a misaligned strap making immediate locating and grasping difficult. Such straps also generate noise when opened, and the loose strap dangling after one grenade has been removed may impair access to other grenades or gear, or may tangle with other items.
Therefore, a need exists for a new and improved grenade pouch lid that protects a grenade primer from impact and secures the grenade in a grenade pouch. In this regard, the various embodiments of the present invention substantially fulfill at least some of these needs. In this respect, the grenade pouch lid according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in doing so provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of protecting a grenade primer from impact and securing the grenade in a grenade pouch.